His diction, explosive. His inflection, distinctive.
His swagger bombarded senses, leaving eardrums to contemplate what they just consumed.
There was nothing like him. He was first and
foremost. A singular entity in an industry flooded
with European descents, his ascent was necessary on levels no one in 1993 understood at the
time.
Stuart Scott besieged the airways after joining
ESPN in 1993. His arrival signaled a change
both in broadcast journalism and the network itself. Simply put, Scott put swag into a company
that was not necessarily ready for it but quickly
came to embrace it. Broadcast journalism was
always a white man’s profession and ESPN in
1993 fell right in line. The lack of diversity of the flagship show, SportsCenter, was loud and profound. But
Scott’s talent was too large to avoid. He was bound to land
on the flagship, and his arrival changed everything.
“A lot of the embracing of hip hop culture we see in sports
media nowadays falls directly in line with what Stu brought
to the table,” said Justin Tinsley, a writer for ESPN. Scott
gave ESPN the sort of cultural jolt Allen Iverson gave the
NBA. Both mammoth entities were, in one way or another,
forced to embrace a sector of life they might not have been
ready for yet.
Scott was not the first Black face on the television screen to
talk about sports, not with the Brothers Gumbel already on
the tube. But Scott was the first one who made it seem like
the fast-talking brotha from the barber shop got a job.
His lingo, littered with catch phrases recognizable at the
Thanksgiving dinner table of thousands of Black families,
made a community of people comfortable. He made a community of people feel like the men behind what they viewed
and heard on television were actually thinking about them
for once.
“Stuart Scott was the superhero of sportscasters,” said
Shemar Woods, an editor for ESPN New York. “You marveled at his natural ability to relate to sports fans from all
walks of life and couldn’t help but say, ‘I want to be like him
when I grow up’.”
Scott planted seeds in a generation of young men and
women that they could do what he did without losing a
sense of themselves. Michael Jordan was the biggest
star in basketball but he never connected with inner city

youth the way Iverson did. Scott was the Iverson to the
Gumbels’ Jordan. He shouted at the top of his lungs who he
was, unapologetically.
Scott did not get off scot free. He battled with criticisms
that he was corny. That his lingo was forced, that he was
conveniently using a community’s language to his own
advantage. At its worst, criticism of the anchor would touch
levels where he saw himself dealing with calls for him to
stop embarrassing Black folks.
He stood up, stood tall and never wavered. To those who
knew him, watched him, studied him and understood him,
they knew he was not faking. It was not an act. He truly
believed the only way he could express himself while staying true to his individuality was what he portrayed. He never
apologized. He never felt the need to. He was going to be
him. And that’s what endeared him to millions.
“Stuart Scott was, in many ways, larger than life,” Tinsley
said. “He revolutionized sports and pop culture in every
facet imaginable. He made sports more fun, and he opened
doors for young people in all walks of life just by his sheer
enthusiasm and ‘love for the game’.”
So many have followed in Scott’s footsteps. Some have
tried to bite his style. Others have simply taken his brazen
outlook on the profession and broken down their own walls
by reenacting the massive chip on Scott’s shoulders. He
benefited from being first, but it never stopped others from
trying to emulate him. Journalism schools across the country are flooded with young men and women who think they
can carry a SportsCenter broadcast as an anchor because
they grew up watching Stuart Scott do it.
Scott was parodied on Saturday Night Live. He showed up
on non-ESPN platforms on multiple occasions. His personality held its own even outside the protective bubble that
was ESPN.
“Our generation grew up loving SportsCenter,” said Andrew